The present invention relates in general to telecommunication systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus, method and system for providing variable termination patterns for multiple leg telecommunication sessions for intelligent network services.
With the advent of increasingly sophisticated telecommunication services, various proposals have been made to allow a single call, incoming to a telecommunication switch, to branch into multiple, independent outgoing calls (or legs) to different called parties, during the same period of time. These incoming and multiple outgoing calls may be wireline, such as PSTN (public switched telephone network), ISDN (integrated services digital network), or T1/E1 wireline calls, or may be wireless, such as cellular calls or other mobile service communications.
Once such proposal is included in the ANSI-41 specification promulgated by the American National Standards Institute for wireless telecommunication, such as cellular communication, and is referred to as xe2x80x9cflexible alertingxe2x80x9d. The ANSI-41 flexible alerting specification, however, does not include any specific directions or guidelines for implementation and control of such independent outgoing multiple leg calls.
As disclosed in the fifth related application, the ANSI-41 flexible alerting specification also does not include the provision of call progress and status information to, for example, provide intelligent network services, such as variable termination patterns for flexible alerting. Other prior art systems which utilize call progress information for various purposes are generally not automatic and do not provide variable alerting patterns; rather information from sources such as billing records may be collected and analyzed by an individual person, who at a later date then manually enters system changes on the basis of his or her analysis. In addition, such provision of call progress information is not in real time, is static until manually changed again, and is not automatically and immediately updated on a dynamic basis.
As a consequence, a need remains for an apparatus, method and system to provide variable termination lists or patterns, based upon call progress and status information, for multiple leg telecommunication sessions, such as for flexible alerting calls. Such an apparatus, method and system should utilize such call progress and status information, to create variable termination and alerting patterns, automatically and without user intervention, should be user friendly, and should be user transparent. Such provision of variable termination and alerting patterns should also be provided in real time and on a dynamic basis, to be responsive to changing environmental and user conditions which may arise in wireless or wireline communication systems.
In accordance with the present invention, a method, apparatus and system are disclosed which provide variable termination and alerting patterns, based upon call progress and status information, for multiple leg telecommunication sessions, such as for flexible alerting services. Such variable termination and alerting patterns are provided dynamically and in real time, to be responsive to changing environmental and user conditions.
For example, call progress and status information may indicate that an outgoing call leg has been misrouted or improperly routed, such as to an erroneously encoded secondary directory number. As a consequence, in accordance with the present invention, that secondary directory number is deleted from the flexible alerting group, and an error message is generated to correct the problem. For subsequent communication sessions, network resources are not wasted by attempting to route an outgoing call leg to a problematic secondary directory number.
Also for example, call progress and status information may indicate that a particular mobile telephone answers and receives many more flexible alerting calls than other members of the flexible alerting group. As a consequence, in accordance with the present invention, the secondary directory number for that mobile telephone may be temporarily deleted from the flexible alerting group, so that an outgoing call leg is not routed to that mobile telephone, allowing other members of the group to answer flexible alerting calls. Under other circumstances, also to allow other members of the group to answer flexible alerting calls, the alerting patterns may be varied, to alert these other members earlier and for a longer period of time.
One of the system embodiments includes a switching center, such as a mobile switching center, and a database, such as a home location register. In addition to receiving an incoming call leg designating a primary or pilot directory number, and routing the outgoing call legs to the various secondary directory numbers, the switching center generates and transmits (to the database) call progress and status information for the plurality of outgoing call legs corresponding to a first plurality of secondary directory numbers associated with a primary directory number. The database has stored in a memory the first plurality of secondary directory numbers and corresponding routing parameters. When the database receives call progress and status information, depending upon the information, the database may alter the termination and alerting patterns for the particular flexible alerting group. The database includes instructions, when the call progress and status information indicates a misrouting of an outgoing call leg of the plurality of outgoing call legs, to delete a secondary directory number corresponding to the misrouted outgoing call leg from the first plurality of secondary directory numbers. In addition, the database includes further instructions, when the call progress and status information indicates a variance from subscriber parameters, such as the answering frequency mentioned above, to adjust a termination and alerting pattern corresponding to the first plurality of secondary directory numbers. For example, timing delay and no answer time parameters may be adjusted to create a varied alerting pattern, or the particular secondary directory numbers utilized for a given session may be varied, to create a different termination pattern.
Numerous other advantages and features of the present invention will become readily apparent from the following detailed description of the invention and the embodiments thereof, from the claims and from the accompanying drawings.